that one bookmark is gone and on one hand im glad i dont have to see it anymore but on the other hand im a little embarrassed at the thought of them having seen me have a whole mini spiral about it at like 5 am. like sorry random person ig

it's awfully refreshing to see a rise in malevolent galas again, and i'm preeet-ty sure your popularity's playing into it. grrrrrrr yes! let that boy kill! let him scheme and conspire! let him wreak havoc like the true planet-destroying fiend he is!

waaahaaa i'm so delighted to hear it! i will be completely honest, i was extremely nervous to post that very first comic with him in (where he was undeniably malicious) because almost every other headcanon i'd seen of him at that point is that he is Just Misunderstood and Actually A Good Guy or, at the very least, perhaps currently acting out but still Redeemable With A Heart Of Gold

and those are amazing too! not a single piece of shade on those characterisations; they are genuinely cathartic tropes and i love to see them- for him or anyone else. but it made me quite scared to have to just be like... 'anyway he is extraordinarily and wilfully cruel in my headcanons and stories!!'

so it really means a lot to me that you enjoy this characterisation!! and that you think possibly it's having an impact on other folks' characterisations in a positive or refreshing way! that's such an honour! i was scared people would loathe my storytelling or characterisation of their favourite blorbo (i still fear it, ngl) or even think that i like... don't like him. but the thing is that i love him. i love him to bits and pieces and because of how much i love him i've done him the ultimate honour of assigning him Irredeemable All-powerful Villain and allowed him free reign to bite and kill

quotes from Kimi Räikkönen's interview for Sport Bild, via scuderiafans (2018)

A bit of community service work to repay his third chance leads to Hien witnessing Zenos' own special brand of weird.

You know, you lot can praise fan content without bashing the canon content…right?

tired girl hours i’m just ranting bcos i don’t have enough time to cry

i had therapy n she told me i need to stop punishing myself relentlessly and its ok that i need help with things and im not a perfect adult or perfect person for that matter and i probably shouldn’t kill myself. im skeptical but we’ll see how it works out

alizayd for character opinion bingo 🧍🏽‍♀️

Thank you! 💖

Alizayd al Qahtani is the fucking best. There is no contest. He's empathetic, he's a sass machine, he's got a backbone made of righteous steel, he's a nerd raised to be a jock and was the best zulfiqari of his generation through sheer determination. He's the smartest (and tallest) man in the room that loves to help people and is also an oblivious social loser. He's a math genius and an economic wizard that outsmarted the Royal Treasury's best accountants as a teenager to secretly fund and make the Tanzeem's illegal transactions untraceable, and *During a Recession* got a millennia-old decrepit hospital to be completely rebuilt and functional in like 6 months. He also actually listens to people, and did possibly the most romantic thing in the series by building Nahri her private Cairo-themed office. He's self-sacrificing and self-denying to a fault and all he wants to do is fix things (and swim, and read), and he perfectly fits into soldier life and civilian life.

My man has the best character arc of the trilogy as he learns and grows past his early prejudice and indecision while sharpening his best traits. He is constantly reevaluating himself and his actions while still holding on to what matters to him, like his faith and his idealism that Daevabad can be improved. Even in the depths of his bitterness or grief, he always returns to trying to do the right thing, and not holding unrelated people responsible for the actions of others. He has the best motivational speeches in the series. His great grandpa is a crocodile and their scenes together are hilarious.

My man Alizayd has some Lord of the Rings: Return of the King-level epicness, in how he is descended from both Zaydi al Qahtani and the marid-blessed Armah. Zaydi, who rallied the djinn world against the genocidal Nahids and overthrew them to take Daevabad 1400 years earlier; and his ally Armah who commanded the marid to help take the city and Suleiman's Ring, and made the ultimate sacrifice by staying allied with the djinn. Ali is constantly compared to Zaydi in City of Brass and Kingdom of Copper, but there's this steady transfer of similarities to Armah in Kingdom of Copper and Empire of Gold, until Ali is truly representing both sides combined as he aids Nahri and a global army that he put together in three days to once again take back Daevabad from a genocidal Nahid. The man is a fucking legend, and with any other author or director it would unquestionably be at the forefront of the story. Instead it hides in background details foe readers to piece together, like it's barely worth mentioning.

This is because my man Ali also has the self-confidence/self-esteem of a shy beetle hiding six feet under the earth, and the author's subtle/vague writing style and inability to stand up for what she's trying to say when people misunderstand has created... how do I word this... A lot of wiggle room for bullshit?

Ali gets dragged a lot for being self-righteous and a fanatic, because characters that are threatened by him in the book call him that, and readers parrot it without any consideration or critical thought. Is it self-righteous to be against slavery? Or to create personal boundaries regarding drinking and premarital sex? Is it fanaticism when he argues against corruption, or practices his religion *in a completely normal way?* I dare say no! But Ali is both black and muslim, so he gets a shit load of shit from every corner, and with the author unable to really clear things up and too cowardly to even admit that Ali is her favorite character without immediately asking everyone to forget she said that (Oops. Also: no), it makes me very, very concerned for whoever ends up playing Ali in the Netflix show. Because if past is any pretext, he's definitely not gonna get paid enough for all the harassment he'll face. And if the author can't stand up for her characters and book themes now, how will she do it when the audience is much, much bigger and louder? :/

As much as I love Ali and his countless parallels with Nahri, and have a thousand headcanons for him (and a thousand fic & art ideas/wips), the series itself (or rather how it undid all its narrative themes in the end to appease loud fans who never understood what the series was trying to say in the first place, along with the author's blindspots regarding the Nahids/Daevas), has made me incredibly bitter. 🙃 I am someone who worships canon encyclopedically and remembers everything, and have come to the unfortunate realization that I cannot in good health ever read this series again.

So my beloved blorbo Ali exists for me in a weird dimension that I cannot really interact with anymore. Made worse because I still desperately want to see fandom stuff, but then also viciously tear apart everything I find. 💀

Idk how to end this. Thanks for the ask! ☺️

respectfully will lana skye please stop ruining my entire life by trying to ruin hers at every fucking turn thanks

The FUCKING panel of Kunikida hugging child Akutagawa mirroring the one where the director hugs Atsushi I'm gonna go fucking HYSTERICAL

It's definitely not the most widely held belief in online fan spaces (at least not at it's full potency, I think a watered down version is more widely felt imo) but I do think some fans approach art and fandom with this weird idea that because a bad story disappoints or even hurts the fans of a work, it's like. A personal and/or moral failing of the creator for making that bad story. And it should be treated with the same gravitas as something with more far reaching consequences and implications. Yknow?

Got myself a litre of chocolate milk as a treat and afterwards I will sleep the best 8 hours of my life

Tryna sit at his feet while he works. Wide, teary eyed and gagged. 🥺🫣🤭